Bremenium

Bremenium stands on the edge of the Rede Valley in the village of Rochester, Northumberland. It was a Roman fort built around 80 AD to guard Dere Street, the main road running north from York. The fort lies five miles north-west of Otterburn on the A68 between Corbridge and Jedburgh. Its position at the end of a ridge gives wide views over the valley to the north and west. Defensive ditches still run outside the north and east walls, and the line of Dere Street passes just beyond them. Early marching camps from the 1st century can be seen across the Sills Burn. The fort is worth visiting because it was one of the last Roman sites north of Hadrian’s Wall to stay in use, until the 270s. It appears in the Ravenna Cosmography, the Antonine Itinerary and Ptolemy’s Geographia, showing how widely it was recognised. The First Cohort of Lingones, then the First Cohort of Dalmatians, garrisoned the fort in the 2nd century. By the 3rd century a thousand-strong First Cohort of Vardulians took over, part-mounted and well-armed. The fort’s unusual artillery platforms held torsion-powered machines called onagri, designed to fire down Dere Street. Today the fort forms part of the village green, but traces remain. The west wall still rises nine feet high, with its stone gate arch standing complete. Excavations in the 19th and 20th centuries found many internal buildings, some with hypocausts for heating. The site is quiet, with the old road and ditches marking the limits of the fort. A short walk across the green brings the past close, where soldiers once watched the road from stone platforms.